Housing Works Bookstore will host a party featuring drinks and nerdery as these debut authors mix and mingle. The first 100 drinks will be free, and purchased books will come with a brand new limited-edition Tor.com tote bag! Tor.com irregular Ryan Britt will act as host for the night’s festivities, so it promises to be a dapper evening.

Brian Staveley will read from The Emperor’s Blades, which inspired Max Gladstone to say: “Come for the intrigue, assassination, death priests, black-ops bird riders, and giant poisonous hive-lizards. Stay for Staveley’s characters, his language, and his way-cool fantasy Zen.”

Ramona Wheeler’s Three Princes, featuring a world where a sun never set on the Egyptian Empire, was called “a richly imagined alternate history, packed with action, adventure and interesting what-ifs” by David Brin.

In A Darkling Sea, James Cambias’ debut novel, a team of deep-sea diving scientists investigates the blind alien race that lives below. According to NPR’s Annalee Newitz, it has all the “gee-whiz wonder of a classic space opera tale, complete with weird aliens.”

David Edison’s tour of the afterlife, The Waking Engine, was called “a fever dream of vivid imagery and dark luscious prose, reminiscent of China Miéville in its byzantine, steampunk-influenced cityscape” by The Library Journal.